Why am I hiring an assistant like this?

A lot of people have asked me why I’m using this process to hire an assistant. Not only why am I doing it publicly and letting anyone apply, but why I am posting my thoughts about each round of applications, and why I talk explicitly about what I’m looking for and what various applications do wrong.

Recap of round two responses

First off, I want to thank everyone who has participated so far. Aside from a very small number of annoying people, most of you were great. Of the 1,500 people who had the opportunity to participate in Round 2, about 800 finished and returned the application on time. This was the Round 2 application:

Recap of round one responses

Well, I got over 4,000 emails responding to my research assistant gig posting. It genuinely flabbergasted me, especially after I took pains to explain to people that this was not a job that involved any sort of goofy partying with me or whatever, and though it pays, it isn’t much at all. I was hoping to get 500 responses.

Of over 4,000 emails sent to me, only about 1,500 got replies back inviting them to the second round. Yes, you read that correctly: Only 37.5% of the people who responded could follow the extremely basic instructions I gave.

Since I have closed the first round and the second round has started, I’m going to go through each instruction and explain how people got them wrong, because I think it might be beneficial to people who are in the second round to understand my thinking. It also might help some of those people who fucked up to understand what they look like to an objective employment source, and learn something from their mistakes.

Here are the full instructions I put up:

Research assistant gig with Tucker Max

I just signed on to do a major book project, something unlike anything else I have ever written. I need to hire a research assistant to help me with it. Anyone can apply for the job–I don’t care about your resume or educational background, I only care about finding the most effective person for the job. If you are interested, read this entire post, then follow the instructions at the bottom to start the process.